Bennys Mist struggles over the last before winning at Taunton on Monday as Venetia Williams recorded a hat-trick at the track. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images

Venetia Williams may have a Cheltenham Gold Cup contender in her yard to add a frisson of excitement to what is already one of the best seasons of her career. The Herefordshire trainer, celebrating a hat-trick of winners here on Monday, said she was considering the race for Katenko, who hacked up in a race worth £31,000 to the winner at Sandown on Saturday.

"I'm going to be very brave and tell the owner he should be entered in the Gold Cup," Williams said. "If he goes and wins another handicap between now and March . . . anything's possible at this stage."

Pointing out that the Gold Cup entries close on Tuesday, Williams continued: "There's no point having thoughts about this after his next race, so I thought, well, let's put him in. He's only just turned seven, so who knows what might happen?

"He's a horse I bought very cheaply at the sales in the summer. We gave ¤30,000 for him and to be ringing the owner and saying: 'That horse I bullied you into buying, I'm now going to enter him in the Cheltenham Gold Cup,' is a slightly surreal experience."

Katenko won Saturday's race by nine lengths from a handicap rating of 136 and Williams expects him to be around 148 when his revised mark is published on Tuesday. Another similar hike, she reasons, would put him into the area where Gold Cup contenders are found. Williams sent out Mon Mome to be third in the 2010 Gold Cup at a time when he was rated 148. Katenko is quoted at 66-1 by one firm.

Andrew Brooks, who owns Katenko, was talking about the Grand National straight after the victory at Sandown and Williams admitted that she sold the horse to him as an Aintree prospect but feels the race might be a year too soon for him this time. She named Kempton's Racing Plus Chase and the Skybet at Doncaster as possible targets for him in the next two months.

Williams' three winners here, her first hat-trick of the season, took her to 51, one short of her tally for the whole of last season and 13 ahead of her total from the one before that. She attributed those two seasons, which were unproductive by her previous standards, to having a quantity of young talent that is now approaching maturity, while continuous wet weather has also suited most of her runners.

She estimates that she had reached a half-century of winners by this stage in only two of her previous 17 seasons. Williams currently lies eighth in the trainers' table, ordered by prize money, having finished 16th last year.

If Katenko makes the Gold Cup, he may yet find himself up against Tidal Bay, whose late-career revival took him to Lexus Chase glory in Ireland over the Christmas period. But Dan Skelton, assistant to his trainer, Paul Nicholls, poured some cold water on the chance of his participation when saying here: "You'd have to think the World Hurdle is the more likely target, if it was normal Cheltenham ground."

Nicholls, currently on holiday in Barbados, has already conceded that Tidal Bay needs soft ground at the highest class because he doesn't jump well enough to hold his position on drier going. Skelton said: "It might be his last chance of running in a Gold Cup, properly. But the chances of it being soft . . . we've been in this situation before, thinking it's definitely going to be soft because it's been soft up to now, but then it can dry out very, very quickly."

Skelton was here to saddle two runners for Nicholls, both of which won on a day when all seven races went to the outright favourite.